


We were born alone

by FalseConfidence



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: A given in this fandom really, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nile isn't here for this banishment malarkey, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26272846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FalseConfidence/pseuds/FalseConfidence
Summary: The connection is meant to be like a light slap, her mom had once said, rocking you in tune to the universes song for you both, a gentle awakening into something greater than yourself.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 46
Kudos: 215





	We were born alone

When Nile was a girl she used to enjoy hearing stories from her mom as she pottered about their apartment in the evening after a long shift at work, listening with rapt attention to the same tales, pleading to hear them again, and again, and again.

“He’d be wearing this ridiculous yellow tie every time he’d come and pick me up.” Her mom would wistfully stare out of the window sometimes, peering up at the sun as it tracked across a charcoal sky. “It was brighter than the sun that tie, almost as bright as his smile.”

Normally the conversation would end there, her mom preparing for dinner in lieu of continuing on a painful subject. Nile can’t say she remembers much of her father, and although she’s sure that he was a great man, a hero, she wishes he hadn’t been if only that she could have seen him in a goofy outfit, grinning solely at her because she's the light of his life, to experience the reverence and wonder in her mom’s voice every time she spoke of her soulmate.

Nile grew up with that story and many others like it, gentle stories, passionate ones, everything in between and all of them sound breath-taking, mesmerising. But truthfully, she’s always wanted to catch the eye of her own soulmate just to have the world spark up in a dazzling array of colours, the greens and reds and purples and blues.

The yellows.

The soulmate she can give or take.

All through high school she congratulates the lucky ones, those first days of term where the excited shrieks are met with congratulations and whispers of who’s next. It continues like this through her two mistaken years at college, through her graduation, and eventually Nile sort of just… gives up on the idea. It no longer becomes her prerogative to see a _blue_ sky and the _green_ grass beneath her toes, she would have liked to, sure, but it isn’t a necessity as she ages and comes to appreciate the many shades of grey that encompass _her_ world.

Once that decision is made somewhere along the lines, Nile stops thinking about the abstract idea of a soulmate so much, enlists and throws herself into her life as a marine. Takes her satisfaction in life from her career, champs at the bit for a chance to prove herself and erase that small kernel of inadequacy in her chest that comes from an entire culture telling her that she's not worth the sum of her parts without another bolstering her up.

If that chance leads her down the same path as her father, has her walking in his footsteps then she can only think of that as a good thing.

A few years down the line, she’s kneeling over a man that wants to kill her, and while she’s trying to grasp at his wound to apply pressure, the bastard does just that.

Nile lies there on the dirt floor of an militants home in the middle of Afghanistan, her friends pleading voice going whisper soft around the roar in her ears, and feels incredibly cheated that her last sight isn’t the burning white ball in the sky but a dark blanket sweeping over her vision until she vanishes into the ether.

\---

Then she wakes up.

And isn’t that just a bunch of bullshit.

\---

It’s a testament to the United States marine corps rigorous training that Nile doesn’t react _that_ badly to the news that she’s supposedly immortal now other than to tie up her new acquaintance while she’s passed out from half a bottle of vodka on a drug dealers plane.

Though given the bullet that went through her fucking amygdala then she might also be having catastrophic brain failure, and this is all a morphine induced fever dream before she really dies.

Nile isn’t too sure which is worse at this point.

In the end it seems that the former is most likely as Andy proceeds to wipe the floor with her, and Nile can only glare up as her bones slide back into her arm with a disturbingly slick sound.

They don’t talk much after that initial scuffle, and Nile finds herself preoccupied until they arrive in Goussainville thinking of what her mom must be experiencing. Whether she’s been called in as a KIA, or if they’ve called her a deserter, claim she's abandoned her duties, attacked her senior officers - because who the fuck else are they gonna blame for this? – and absconded in a fit of madness.

Nile, again, isn’t sure which would be worse, honestly, and the not knowing has her on edge when they touch down, her feet dragging without intending. Andy keeps looking back at her, not out of concern so much as always keeping herself alert, head swivelling around and mapping out the area around them until Nile thinks that she might be able to navigate it blindfolded if such an occasion arose.

There’s one person waiting for them in the entrance, and another with a bead on her from the shutters of the steeple and, with the knowledge that she’s supposedly invincible now, Nile snaps off a sharp salute and smiles sardonically up at them to cover the shaking of her hands.

It’s this that costs her a few precious seconds to be prepared as she walks into the cool interior of the church, catching up as Andy greets someone and disappears further into the recesses of the building.

The connection is meant to be like a light slap, her mom had once said, rocking you in tune to the universes song for you both, a gentle awakening into something greater than yourself.

_What a load of bollocks._

_This_ is like being cracked across the face and plummeting from the penthouse of a skyscraper, a free-fall that swooshes the air from her lungs in a violent expulsion from the very moment her eyes lock onto dirty blonde hair and the unfairly handsome face that comes with it. Colours explode across her field of vision, terrifyingly _loud_ hues if there’s a way to describe it, the influx of information making her brain hurt, everything caught in the wild pounding of her heart.

His eyes are the most unfair shade of green swirled with blue, she discovers the words for later, and it’s this duality that has her stepping back first.

The wonder in those eyes shifting to a startled horror is also a contributing factor.

Bliss and euphoria, everyone describes it as a blend between the two, a recognition of if not lovers then the strongest of ties in companionship. _Besties for life_ , she’d thought mockingly at the time. Now it’s just a nausea rising in her gut, and swilling acid in her belly, an out of body experience as she stumbles for something to say.

“Are you standing around for a reason Booker?”

 _Ah, shit_.

Booker’s horror vanishes when Andy pops her head around the corner. “Coming boss.”

Nile can do little else but follow him into the church all while listening to the discography of her own heart.

\---

The meal is awkward.

Reasonable really, when Nile is firing off questions to cover the dazed expression that she’s sure is giving her away like a floodlight. There’s heat prickling under the surface of her skin, skimming the tops of her ears and it’s again thanks to her military training that it doesn’t show.

Not that any this is helped when her… soulmate is sat a foot away from her, staring for seconds longer than can be labelled as cursory.

The sheer amount of information is enough to give her, recently shot, brain an overload that creates white noise whining under the voices around her, and when Nicky offers to show her to a room, Nile escapes gratefully.

Tries and fails not to scare herself when she goes past the mirror in the tiny bathroom and sees herself in all of her glorious colour for the first time in her life.

If there's one positive to this, then at least Nile can finally say that she's knows her body with a perfect clarity.

\---

The brackish taste of water merging into coarse salt on her tongue as she awakens in a strange room, surrounded by strange people, has Nile cursing herself internally for waking them.

For giving them a reason to ask.

For giving in and telling.

When all she can think about is how much worse it is to see this abandoned woman in a box at the bottom of the ocean now she’s awash in the murky shades of the deep.

Nile really wishes she hadn’t told them when Nicky explains, when she listens to a tale of ruination. She _feels_ exposed, in front of practically gods for how young she is in comparison and feels a shiver travel down the line of her spine. There’s already something in her twitching, itching, _longing_ to turn towards Booker for comfort and Nile does not appreciate fate, or the universe, trying to involve itself where it’s not been invited.

She needs to escape, get out before she thinks further about the fact that she’s going to keep experiencing these haunting nightmares of a woman screaming soundlessly in the dark. This will keep happening because there’s never going to be a chance that they meet, and none of them can understand, except for…

 _A thing that we share_ , Nile thinks fleetingly as she stalks outside _, a monstrous atrocity._

When Andy follows she cannot help but lash out, claws extended because everything is happening at once, flowing from one bit of fuckery to the next and she hasn’t had a chance to catch her breath let alone analyse the chaos surrounding her. Can’t decide the best move, the most strategic, logical thing to do when all her body is letting her think of is the man inside.

The _crack_ of gunfire and a detonation in the distance comes just before Nile can feel the guilt at Andy’s cold retort, face pale under the moonlight.

Though she’d much rather that than the sight that greets her as she stumbles behind Andy into the church and her eyes see every single droplet of blood cascading out of Booker’s ripped open gut.

She thinks that she can see a pattern there, hieroglyphs gouged into his bone, eerie in it's carnage, and adrenaline floods Nile’s system like she's submerged in ice.

Something merciless and intense ricochets around her own stomach, a scratching behind her eyes growing stronger as she gets tunnel vision, instinctively focused on one thing, years of training that has her accept Andy’s gun, storming into the back room with a murderous intention.

It’s terrifying, the depth of her relief, when she comes back and he’s groaning, but very much alive.

\---

She’d been six when she’d first heard more about soulmates, outside of the sphere of her mom’s experience. It’d been from her grandmother, a woman who never winced when Nile used to cram a handful of delicious, homemade cookies in her mouth and only encouraged her with a sweet joy.

“Soulmates are two people who, for whatever reason, are handpicked for each other.”

“Who decides that?” Nile had asked around an accidental spray of crumbs.

Her grandmother laughed, and gently explained, “It’s a bond that has no origin, unbreakable, ancient and undeniable. It may not always be pretty, that sort of love, and it’s rarely perfect, but you shouldn’t ever ignore it, sweetheart.”

“Why?”

“Because the hardest things are often the most rewarding if you take the time to look after them. Like now for example, I have a granddaughter coated in chocolate chips, do I discard of her for not being squeaky clean, or do I love her regardless?”

Looking back, it’s a simple comparison, but Nile had giggled and proceeded to wipe the back of her hand across her face before climbing into her grandmothers lap to wrap her arms around her waist.

In the here and now Nile watches Booker from the small circle of illumination thrown by the fire after Andy disappears into the night and tries to see through the smudges and deflections.

She feels, already, as though he’s forced an entry from his reality into hers, eked out a little space for himself where she hasn’t given him permission for yet. It’s remarkably invasive this whole soulmate business, and still the fabric of her being seems content with that, as if it’s perfectly normal for him to occupy her mind like this.

It sets something wild under her skin to think that he may not feel an inkling of this madness in return.

He’d thought to bring her clothes when she didn’t think beyond the layer of grime already built into the seams of her own, and he doesn’t hesitate to listen to her ideas when she suggests them in regard to tracking. There’s an air about him that lends itself to despair, and Nile wonders how nobody else has bought it up so far. Admittedly she doesn’t think there’s been much time, given the whole kidnapping and massacre they’ve left behind in Goussainville.

Maybe this is how he is, distant and despondent when left to his own vices, a wind-up clock that hasn’t had the care to maintain its natural rhythm.

Nile finds herself wanting to learn more.

Instead she goes and does something stupid, like sticking her hand into the dancing flames because they’re so fucking beautiful and she forgets how soft her newly invincible skin is under the heat.

Booker laughs quietly and it _sings_ to Nile, has her feeling this stubborn urge to poke and prod until she finds a sore nerve, if only that it might get something with passion and verve, something raw and exposed in return.

She gets raw and exposed in the end, it’s just not what she’s expecting and her heart breaks as he recounts his family and their cruelty to spare her sharing her more tender memories just yet.

It’s a kindness she doesn’t expect, and won’t forget.

“This isn’t your fight.” He says quietly after a while, resignation in the curve of his shoulders.

Nile chooses not to hear him as she lies down and pretends to sleep.

\---

After the cave... Well it’s all kind of a shitshow.

\---

Thinking on it Nile wonders whether he might have been trying to warn her of his intentions in the cave, attempting to be subtle in a blatantly obvious manner.

So, when James Copley reveals it all, Nile doesn’t know why she’s so surprised.

Continues to think on it all until she’s shot twice in the front and lying on her back with her eyes closed in Merrick pharmaceuticals, and then decides it’s probably best if she buckles the fuck up before this ends with her laid out on a morgue table getting cut open and inspected like a bloody training cadaver.

She gets to see just how brilliantly _red_ arterial blood is as it flies through the air, paints the walls and bathes the floor in its hue as she dashes through the fucking maze of a building, drawn by a cord between her ribs, instinctual, tugging and frothing and sizzling as she draws closer to where she needs to be.

A tiny sliver of the rational part of her mind tries to steel herself for the abject horror of what she might see when finally makes it to the large security doors, gunfire blazing from behind her somewhere, and she fumbles with Copley’s ID badge, fingers shaking as she swipes it down and crashes into the lab.

 _There you are_.

She would like to say that she doesn’t pause for a handful of crucial seconds as he says her name, confusion writ across his face once she’s scanned across the four of them and ended at-

“Behind you!”

Getting shot at is not an experience Nile is ever going to get used to, firing back blindly and huffing around the blood filling her lungs for a moment before dissipating as she swings the door shut.

From breaking her knuckles open on the blonde who comes at her with a hypodermic needle to releasing Andy and rallying her back to the living, to use a shit term, Nile thinks she can’t be hiding the relief ballooning in her chest as she turns to release Booker from his restraints.

There’s a warm fuzzy glow in her stomach that shatters at the despair in his eyes, the defeated edge lining his voice as he utters complete shit.

The bullet in her shoulder burns as it pops out of her flesh like a splinter.

The incandescent rage at his dejected slump burns hotter still.

 _You fuck_. She thinks. _Don’t you dare think you can leave me alone in this world._

“No man left behind.” She snaps and purposefully doesn’t touch the back of his hand like a traitorous voice in her mind tells her too.

\---

_Isn’t it sad that the first time you’ve willingly touched me is when my body has been cleaved into a thousand fragmented pieces._

She wants to say it aloud, but that might require energy she’s already expended on throwing herself out of the penthouse of a lunatic. So she simply savours the brief contact as he pulls her out of the car, while her body knits itself back together in real time with his strength holding her up for the precious seconds she needs before she can bear her own weight once more.

\---

It’s inevitable, that’s what everyone says. No matter what you do, or how hard you fight, travel to the four corners of the world if you will, but your soulmate, once found will in turn find you unerringly like an arrow, crossing your path wherever you go.

Almost like a curse.

Nile doesn’t want to think about what this separation will feel like, the oppressive weight of it when she hears them come to a verdict and excuses herself to join him out on the decking.

Engaging in small talk as he drinks is not what she wants to be their final words before they’re both to suffer from his mistakes, and don’t get her wrong. He fucked up. Horrifically, and Nile doesn’t know how to map out the sheer breadth of his betrayal, not in the way that Nicky, Joe and Andy now have to.

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked why.” He admits, scrubbing a hand down his face.

“I thought about it.” She says. “But it’s not me that needed the explanation, and I try not to get lost in the quagmire of _what ifs_. Doesn’t do anybody any good.”

There’s a minor vibration and she realises he’s trying not to laugh, seems as surprised by it as she is, and when he looks at her she’s arrested by the blend of green and blue, long enough it feels almost rude to look away.

“You’re a lot wiser than the rest of us, Nile.”

“Undoubtedly. Doesn’t need saying really.” She smiles tiredly when in her peripherals she sees Andy and the other two rise from their tables, walking to the bar to place their empty glasses down before they come out here and set the guillotine so to speak.

 _I want more time_.

A laughable thought, given their circumstances.

“I’m sorry that you had to come into this now. It’s one hell of a trial by fire.”

“That’s why you warned me in Val D’Argent.” She hazards a guess. “Or tried to, I guess.”

“Not my best move.”

Nile almost rolls her eyes, and might have failed in restraining herself, if he hadn’t hesitantly caught her hand in his, lifting it up to brush a kiss over her knuckles, and _oh fuck_ does it feel nice.

“After…” He struggles to think of a way to put to words the punishment he must know is coming. “ _This_ … We might get the chance to know one another properly.”

It faintly feels as if he’s just thrown a handful, all that he has in his possession, of faintly shining stars at her feet.

“I’d like that.”

Nile turns to leave, but not before carefully plucking them from the ground and carrying them in her clenched fingers.

When she passes Andy there’s a flash of acknowledgement, _recognition_ , a brow rising in surprise and then just a hand on her shoulder before the immortal moves on to render judgement.

A hundred years.

 _No_ , Nile determinedly begins to plan, _I think bloody not._


End file.
